


everybody talks

by abusedtrademarkemoji



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff, High School, Pure Peter Parker, That's it, i guess? idk, that's literally it - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 20:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19753666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abusedtrademarkemoji/pseuds/abusedtrademarkemoji
Summary: midtown has a lot of free time to spend on gossiping, and rumour has it that peter and michelle hooked up over the weekend.





	everybody talks

Peter spends 180 days of his year in school. Or at least he tries. Peter tries, that is. Spider-Man not so much. That said, if two thirds of his year are spent in school (weekend-inclusive), it doesn’t live out to be exceptionally thrilling. In fact, there is almost nothing that surprises him anymore. The last school-related affair that truly left him shook was who answered the door when he went to pick up Liz Allan for Homecoming.

That’s a whole other story. Today is different.

The moment his scuffed-up Converse clamber up the stairs, he feels the prickle of needles all down his back.

Something is wrong—seriously, gravely, irreparably wrong.

All throughout his trek, Peter feels the heavy weight that the gaze of his peers drops on him. He looks down, ashamed and not really understanding why. Wearing pants? Of course. Fly’s up? Check. Toilet paper on his shoes? No. So, what gives?

He wipes at his mouth in case the cream cheese on his bagel smeared onto his cheek when he wolfed it down on the train. He runs his hands through his hair like a child throwing a tantrum, but it only serves to make his normally gelled down and conservative waves turn into a tsunami of reckless curls and cowlicks. He second-guesses his _“pi: get real”_ shirt. The blood that rushes to his ears overpowers the trickle of gossip between students strung along the halls, avoiding him like he has the Cheese Touch™.

Fortunately, Ned is waiting for him by his locker, eyes wide open and smile bordering on brilliant. “Dude!” He shouts, as if Peter didn’t already have enough attention on him without the floundering squalls of his best friend from across a hallway. “Why didn’t you tell me!?”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Peter hisses, head flipping to each side to see how much peaked interest Ned drew to him. Eyes are drawn to their interaction and it isn’t the most subtle performance. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“You and MJ!” He slides between Peter and his locker, preventing Peter from grabbing his AP Bio book. “Obviously.”

“Me and MJ what?” Peter slips his bag off one shoulder to zip a book into it.

“You guys hooked up, right? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, dude.” Ned folds his arms. “I thought we told each other everything.”

“Huh? We do tell each other everything!” Paranoid, “Who told you that, anyway? Michelle and I, we didn’t do anything together.”

It is critical to note that Peter does not tell everything to Ned. Some things are better left unsaid, some secrets better left unshared. Peter wishing the rumour was true is one of them. Peter having a big, fat, unassuming crush on Michelle being another.

“The whole school has been talking about it. MJ told the girls in Acadec.”

Peter is incredulous. Michelle told people this, herself? _Willingly_? “I don’t know why she said that. I didn’t even know she liked me as a _friend_ , let alone… _that_.” He can admit that he’s a little breathless between words.

Ned’s eyes flick over his face and track the miniscule movements of his features. “You aren’t lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

Around pursed lips, Ned says, “We have a lot of shit to figure out, then.” Ned’s gaze wanders to a new evil, pupils shrunken by the blinding image. He karate chops Peter’s shoulder to grab his attention and then grabs a fistful of his sweater.

Peter straightens his collar when he’s approached by the girls. “Hi, Peter,” Cindy purrs.

Sally is twirling her hair.

Peter is sweating, a little bit.

“Hey, Cin,” He greets, wary under her devilish gaze. If they’re acting like that, then maybe Michelle really did have something to say about him. Concerned, he asks. “Have you seen Michelle yet today?”

She snickers. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” mocked around a tight-lipped grin. So, it’s true. Michelle said something about him to the girls, and the girls said it to _x_ , _y_ , and _z_ , thus breaking all rules of sisterhood.

Immediately, Peter blushes. His cheeks betray him and let out all the thoughts he didn’t know he had. Sally joins in on her laugh and now even more people around them are staring. The halls are beginning to clear as classrooms fill up, but there is a knot of traffic around them. He ducks his head and ignores his heightened sense of people watching with intent. “Yeah, I would.” A girl snickers from somewhere behind him. Another steps on his heel, caught in the sea of the misinformed.

Sally generously offers that “She has Calc this period.” But along with the tidbit of information, she also sends a commiserative glance his way.

He tells Ned to go to Bio without him and heads down to the math wing of the school, one-track minded. Just as Peter rounds the last corner, he catches her teacher closing the door. Sprinting the last dozen feet, he skids to a halt.

“Excuse me! Wait, wait!” Fraught, Peter clutches at the door jamb at the risk of losing a few fingertips. Now Ms. Warren is not the most sympathetic person, but she does like Peter, and maybe that is enough.

“What’s the story today, Parker?” She asks him, wary.

“Can I talk to MJ?” He tippy-toes to see over Ms. Warren, ensuring that Michelle is, in fact, in attendance. She’s pouring through the pages of a book he can’t quite discern. Recalling yesterday’s pace at lunch, she is most definitely on a new one already, so it isn’t any use to guess from here.

“I don’t know, _can you_?”

Peter sighs, “ _May_ I speak to Michelle, please, Ms. Warren?” He branches out his arms in a hastily indicative bow.

“Oh, I wasn’t asking you,” she jeers, opening the door wide enough for him to duck under her arm for a better glimpse of the girl. Without missing the chance to haze Peter, poor, poor Peter, she reconciles. “Michelle, there is a boy outside with a glass slipper, would you like to answer a question for him?”

The class laughs. It is neither shrewd nor for show. It is all real, baby. And it fucking sucks. Ms. Warren is really decking out some punches here, improving her showboating of being the second bluntest person in the world, after Michelle Jones, of course.

“Uh,” MJ’s voice is gravelly enough that he can tell that this is her first time speaking since waking up today. “Not really…”

Oof.

The laughter dies into pity and he sinks into the human zoo, pondered at and ogled by the class that is intrigued by the boy who was bewitched.

Big oof.

“Sorry, Mr. Parker. See you after lunch,” Ms. Warren sends her regards. The chagrin of Peter grows like a canker on a too-young tree. Poor, poor Peter.

Word shifts and twists its way around like melted pennies, stamped with a new face at each turn. It’s Midtown, after all. Students here aren’t known for anything remotely sexual. Most of the boys don’t know what or where the clitoris is and, at this point, they’re too afraid to ask. Most of the boys, yes, but not Peter. Because apparently everyone seems to be talking about the new Lothario, an undiscovered “daddy”, this fresh off the print Disney prince who is packing it. The school is wilding.

He lets his shoulders drop and submits to the problem at hand. Peter’s entire weight is held up by his forehead which he leans against the cool metal of his locker, begging it to cool the heat of his face. The vein between his brows pulsates.

There’s a polite tap on his shoulder.

He doesn’t bother turning his head at first, only uses his peripheral vision to see that it’s Gwen Stacy, his lab partner from the previous semester.

Shifting to face her entirely, he rubs at the dent of pink in his forehead from where his head previously met the steel of his locker. He greets her, “What’s up, Gwen?” It’s a curious thing. They haven’t spoken since their final lab procedure, all that he remembers is bidding her to have a merry Christmas.

“I, uh,” she wrings her hands together before shoving them in her cardigan pockets. She looks less like herself. “I just wanted to ask how you were doing.”

“Oh, thanks.” He’s genuinely surprised. Even Ned didn’t ask if he was okay after everything that’s unfolded today. And it isn’t even lunch yet. “So, I guess you’ve heard, huh?”

Her eyes flick away, “only some stuff.”

Lovely, he actually misses his reputation of being a loser who can’t speak to girls.

“I’m alright, I guess,” Peter’s ear is itchy. “Thanks for asking, you’re actually the only person who has so far.”

“Of course,” her feet tap together, “I gotta be honest though, my intentions here aren’t entirely altruistic.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I actually... I actually wanted to see what you’re doing tomorrow night. Or the day after. Saturday? I don’t know. But yeah.” Her shoulders are bunched up so stiffly that it looks almost painful.

“I,” Peter takes his time to fully digest it.

“You don’t need to be nice about it,” she decides, and now she more closely resembles the Gwen he used to know. Her screwed tight smile loosens to something more natural.

Peter is tired of denying things that are true now that everything he hears about himself is a lie. So what? He likes MJ, he does. There’s no point in lying about that anymore.

“The things people are saying about me aren’t real, if that’s what’s making you do this,” he admits.

“That’s not-”

“It’s okay, whether it was or wasn’t. Only thing true is that I do like Michelle though, I think I’ve liked her for a while now. Huh,” he puts on the first smile that feels authentic today. “It feels pretty good to say that actually.”

Gwen Stacy looks endeared. The moment is only interrupted because the hairs on Peter’s neck raise. He turns 180° to see that Michelle is watching their exchange from a locker bank away, at least before hurrying away once she’s caught. The moment he catches her eye, something volts her system and she steels herself with animation, immediately shrugging to face the other way.

“Is it al-”

“You should go,” Gwen tells him, so he turns on his heel. “I’m rooting for you, Peter!” She calls once he takes off jogging.

He feels like he might have a chance now.

“MJ,” Peter calls, tumbling through the boisterous crowd of not-quite-late students. He can already see her walk away, chin tipped upward, practically indifferent. Again, louder: “MJ!”

He squeezes between shoulders, tracking the bustling head of curls that escapes him. He hears Vine references and talk of last night’s episode of whatever show, but it goes in one ear and pours right out of the other. Peter should be known for his one-track mind.

Between ducking around other students and missing swinging doors and ankles, Peter loses her despite grave intent.

He deflates and his day rolls on, MJ-less and without a paddle.

By lunch time the rumours are well beyond spread. It is past butter on toast, far from Mets-fandom-anti-Yankees propaganda. No, worse than that. These rumours are spreading like post-Coachella herpes. He’s fucked. Literally. He is so fucked.

It’s so horrible and embarrassing because it elevated from them hooking up, to them having _sex_ , (real sex??), and finally, sharing a locker. Which might be the worst of all. That is long-term settlement. And it is so horribly wrong, because Michelle won’t even look at him, let alone hang her coat with his.

He ducks around and spies until he sees his target waiting outside a dark classroom that is now forming a line behind her. Peter waves at Cindy shamelessly to get her attention and she immediately pulls an AirPod out in grievance. He can hear the tinny sound of something mumbly and emo and definitely has a parental advisory for adult content. She says nothing, just raises her eyebrows in exasperated inquisition.

“Cindy, I need to know. I really—like really, really—need to know.”

Flippantly, “Know what? I already gave my Spanish homework to Jason, so don’t bother.” She pops a fresh piece of gum into her mouth and her breath stings his eyes.

“No!” Is she stupid? That’s obviously not what this is about. It’s about MJ. It’s always about her, which is exactly what he tells her with a shrill, pubescent voice.

“Y’know, that’s not a really good way to get a favour out of someone.”

“Please, Cindy, I’m so desperate.”

“Huh, and water is wet.”

“Cindy,” serving as both a plead and a reminder of the question.

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to disclose that information...” She offers him an elusive look of suggestion, waggling her eyebrows like she was beckoning him to join a cult.

“Are you kidding me? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Debatable.”

Peter sighs, defeated. “Well, just spit it out already. What do you want?”

“So, I hear you’re friends with our local celeb, Spider-Man.”

Peter wants to scalp himself, hesitant as to whether or not this is at all worth it.

It is, he decides.

“And?”

“And I want-”

True to luck, Betty interrupts. With blonde hair that is nearly glowing a halo, she rejoices a cheerful “Hi guys! What’s up?”

“Peter is propositioning me,” Cindy lies. Or, sort of lies.

“Uh, no?” Peter is a flaming red. Sweaty, too. He’s hideous.

“MJ won’t like that.” Betty declares, snickering.

Peter both perks up and sways in discomfort.

“Shut up, Betty.” Cindy’s words are harsh, but she’s laughing, and Betty laughs with her. Together, they mock Peter and a person not present.

“MJ picked you,” Betty says casually. Not even a whim of apprehensions keeps her from telling Peter the truth, unlike her mirror.

“ _Betty_ ,” Cindy chastises.

“What? He asked, didn't he?” she defends.

Peter’s mind is swirling. “Picked me for what?”

Cindy forfeits. “We were playing Fuck, Marry, Kill using the Acadec boys for shits and gigs. Michelle kept picking you.”

Incredulous, he repeats himself, because the question has only grown in size. “Picked me for what?”

“Michelle doesn’t like to follow the rules,” Betty starts.

Cindy elaborates, “She picked you for everything. Even if we weren’t including you. MJ wants to kill you, marry you, and fuck you. Not necessarily in that order.”

Peter’s blood drains. “That’s-she said that? _That’s_ what you guys do in your spare time?”

“Acadec practice is boring,” Cindy says, like it’s simple.

Peter is almost relieved? It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been a hell of a lot worse. And, uh, some of that is good. Some of that is _really_ good.

Okay.

Peter can work with this.

“I gotta go,” he bolts with less than a goodbye.

\--

Pete has reached The Last Resort™. A complete shot in the dark, but that’s been at least 40% of Peter’s life since the bite anyway. He’s got this. The evening is blossoming, and the sky is streaked in a bloody rust. Peter is a man on a mission.

He picks up flowers on his way to hers. Lilies, because they are the flower of death; Michelle loves nothing if not irony. Once the man wraps them in tissue, adds a packet of flower food, Peter snatches them and throws a sheepish thank you over his shoulder. Immediately stripping from his joggers and sweater, he reveals his already worn suit. Then he dons the mask, prepared for his most daunting assignment yet.

If this goes wrong, he could possibly get an MJ-certified ass-whooping. And since MJ could probably have beat Thanos, she can definitely beat him. She would have beaten Thanos the first time, he thinks. The thought makes him grin. Just a little one, kept for himself and no one else. The one he makes when no one is watching.

So, Peter didn’t actually think this through if he’s being honest. He doesn’t _actually_ know where she lives, not exactly. But he has an approximation put together. Karen helps, too.

Which is how Peter ends up swinging from one window to the next, checking every one. He knows that it’s this building. It has to be, if he’s properly pieced together the offhand comments made to him by her about which train she has to catch and the café she boasts about, the pretty ivy that climbs the side and the doorman with his corgi. This has to be it. Peter, at the very least, hopes he can actually differentiate which window is actually hers. It’s been twenty minutes of swimming through windows and fire escapes like he’s channel surfing until something catches his eye.

Michelle is sitting with her parents, legs crisscrossed and mounted on her chair at the dinner table. She’s wearing a sweater that is perhaps bigger than some island countries. It’s smocked with paint and hangs just at the knee.

He’s seeing her do something he didn’t know was possible, if he’s honest. Michelle is laughing so freely, loud enough that it chirps through the seams of the window and it sounds like wind chimes. It hits him like goddamn wind chimes. He wishes maybe she would share that same laugh with him. If she did, he would show her that smile. The one he’s never shown anyone before. Her head tilts with energy and she gets a good view of the window and him and—oh. Oh, shit.

Peter kicks off the sill he was perched on, flies down with his back whooshing straight to the ground in the free fall. He _thwips_ a line of web for the brakes. Half of the buds of the baby’s breath have taken a hit and flown away in the wind, but the rest of the flowers can be salvaged.

Not too much of a blow, he evaluates. Well, except for his dignity.

He swings back up to her floor once he deems it safe enough. He looks to the window to the right of the one he flung himself off of. Sure, it’s a complete breach of privacy. And he would want hell to swallow him up if Michelle caught a look at his own bedroom, but duty calls. Seeing into her room without her knowing—it feels wrong. Dirty. Even still, he flits over the details. Books on books on books, that’s not new. Neither are the newspapers laid out over her carpet as a makeshift tarp for her makeshift art studio. What does surprise him is the 8x10 print of the Acadec team winning in Washington, with herself holding the trophy. Flash has bunny ears over Ned and Ned’s arm is slung over MJ without caution. And MJ—Michelle, she’s… indescribable. She smiles in a way like she isn’t quite sure how. It’s an honest smile, only a little bit reserved, Mona Lisa-esque. But better. Oh, it’s so much better.

Problem is, Peter isn’t in it. He hates that. He wishes he could have shared that moment with them, with her.

He figures he has less than minutes left to get the job done. He leaves the flowers to lay flat across the wrought iron window box and slips a note between leaflets, imparting: _I don’t care what people say about you and me. I like that there is a you and me. Non-exclusive._

Peter hopes that this is enough to get her to actually look at him for more than a second. He hopes it really hard. Slinging another web for escape, he allows himself one last scan before takeoff, but it takes a little longer than expected because there are two more photos that strikes his eye. A photo of her family, because of course, but the one ajar to it is most especially outstanding.

Brad took it. He knows that because he has seen this photo many times, looks at it semi-regularly, because it deserves that kind of attention.

It’s taken almost from the side. A dumb polaroid with a bit too much exposure that makes Peter blend into the sunlight and Michelle glow at every angle. He’s captured mid-shove from MJ. Her nose is scrunched and lips are pouted and if you didn’t know her well enough you might think she was properly mad. If you did know her, you’d see her eyes are gleaming and there are just some things you can’t hide. Peter, on the other hand, is so obviously ecstatic. His eyes are squeezed shut and he is proud. Even though he’s being shoved, his shoulders remain steady and almost pompous, because she’s noticing him. Peter was able to pull a reaction from her and it might just be the noblest moment of his life.

Beside MJ, Ned has his head in his hands but even so, you can still see his smile beyond the shadows. How is he just now seeing what was always there? It’s not new to him. Liking Michelle is a many months old awareness. The thing that’s new, the matter at hand, is that all of this makes so much sense. All along he thought he liked how Michelle made him feel special, like he isn’t boring or ugly or desperate or not enough or any of the things he feels so often. All this time, it’s because maybe he _is_ special. Because MJ only lets him sit next to her, not anybody else. Close enough that their shoulders scrape and sometimes if he’s lucky their fingers bump together. Because MJ will stay late after practise to make sure he has the materials for next week. Because she tags him in mildly disturbing and always hilarious memes during class. Because she’s the one who laughs with him and not at him.

He’s special to Michelle, and that’s really all that matters.

Peter is painted with _that_ smile the whole way home, past his quick microwave dinner leftovers (courtesy of May), he smiles in his dreams and over his morning breakfast. Something feels _right._

No one sees MJ until lunch. He and Ned are sitting with most of the Acadec group, cradled around the corner of a lunch table. She drops her books onto the table with a thud, announcing her arrival. The dramatic effect is not lost on the peanut gallery.

She’s making the same face she had on in the photo, with her nose scrunched enough to make her the perfect combination of both cute and scary. “I just want to let you know that what you did last night was creepy.” She takes a careful pause. Peter’s heart drops, and an embarrassed flush washes over him. “But what I did was also kinda creepy.”

“Interesting development,” Peter replies. “And the results?” He is hopeful. Desperately, miserably, hopeful.

“Positive.”

So hopeful.

“I didn’t mean to be creepy.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Her threatening glare has softened to a withering smirk. “Get up.”

He follows her command instinctively.

She reaches over Ned, ignoring everyone else’s vulture-like stares of predation, and takes Peter’s hand. “Where are we going?”

“Literally anywhere else.” She shoots a pointed scowl to the peeping toms from below. They fleetingly mind themselves and give a poor attempt at looking busy, as if they weren’t fawning over the previous exchange.

“Lead the way,” Peter isn’t actually sure how he is able to make real words come out of his mouth right now. The words themselves are suave, but his voice is squeaky? And sharp? But she takes him alongside her anyway, and her palm is just as clammy as his own.

She leads him only as far as the exit near the courtyard, opting for something close and quiet enough that they wouldn’t need to humiliate themselves in front of all their peers.

“I’m sorry things got so out of hand this week.” Michelle pulls her hand away and wrings it through her bangs, yet it droops back to the position it had already been in regardless.

“Yeah, me too.”

“I don’t know where to go from here,” Peter admits.

“Me neither,” and she slumps on the sill of the window. “We can make those rumours true,” she suggests. Peter can’t tell if MJ is kidding or not. He never can.

Regardless, his face bursts into a blush that could rival the centre of a star.

“Well,” Peter can’t look away from her. Her hair is wrapped over her shoulder and wispy and frizzy in all the right places. It’s brown and golden and there’s a streak of purple that looks red in the sun. “I’d really just like to kiss you first.”

“Then kiss me,” and she tucks her hair again, either as an invitation or born out of nerves.

Peter doesn’t hesitate. He’s waited a long, long time for this and he never expected it would come to him so easily. He leans in closer and his lack of height makes it comfortable. His forearm rests against the warm glass window, and he places his other hand to rest on her hip with the lightness of a feather’s touch.

The first press of their lips is chaste. It’s a timeless meeting of finally requited desires. Lights flash over their faces together as the beating sun reflects off the trophy cases. MJ leans up to it, let’s them taste each other more fully. It’s not the kiss that can stop wars and end droughts. It’s a kiss that feels like clean sheets and drinking something bubbly. It’s a kiss that is reassuring, it tells him he will be doing this for a long time, many times and in endless capacity.

The kiss is something to make Peter question if his whole life can be split into two acts: Before and After.

By knowing all these things, it’s actually possible (barely so) to pull away. If there is anything to rival that perpetual bliss, then it is the sight of her looking at him. Fondly and spinning and longing and oh, wow, those are the warmest, brownest, fullest eyes he’s ever fucking seen.

“So, what do we tell the school now?”

“Nothing,” he tells her. MJ re-tucks her hair and laughs in agreement. Like goddamn wind chimes. He doesn’t want to share a single fact, sight, or moment. This is Michelle and this is Peter and that’s really all they need in a relationship.

If he could choose, that would be it, even though he knows that inevitably Ned will involve himself, and eventually the team too.

But that can wait.

They kiss again and okay, maybe it is harder to pull away than he first thought.

She slides her hand from his jaw to his shoulder. A slender finger traces his protruding collarbone and shivers ensue up his spine. Peter wonders if she already knows all the ways to make him want to die. She asks, delighted, “Wanna skip PE and make out?”

It confirms what he already knew. She really knows how to kill him in all the right ways.

And so, Peter doesn’t want to share anything with anyone. Not one thing. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is garbage fluff that was stuck in my head and yet it took me months to write. i also thought this would be like max 1.5k... pls enjoy, ok thanks.
> 
> title is from that one song by neon trees bc why not
> 
> love, peace, n chicken grease ! xx


End file.
